Poor Kid
by Gypsy Love
Summary: Craig and Joey have a talk after Craig comes home from the hospital. A bit of an exploration of their tricky father son relationship.
1. Chapter 1

The T.V. was up too loud, it filled the silence. Angie was with Joey's mother, he'd wanted Craig to have some time home without her, her ceaseless energy and questions. He thought Craig needed a break from that, but maybe it was him who needed the break. The whole time of Craig's hospitalization Angie kept at him. 'Where's Craig?' 'Why'd he leave?' 'Why'd he hurt you?' 'Will he hurt me?' 'When's he coming back?' He couldn't take it any more.

Craig watched T.V., his expression sullen. Joey couldn't tell anymore if this was normal teenage angst-y sullenness or part of his mood disorder or the bipolar "acting up" as he thought of it. He had thought he had known, before…before. He had thought that Craig was fine. A little rebellious, maybe. A kid who could push the limits, yeah. But still normal. Still okay. Nothing like his father, Albert.

And then it all crashed down on him. He realized that he had been wrong, that things were far more serious than he wanted to admit. Craig had tried to commit suicide in ninth grade after he ran away, after he had nearly kidnapped his sister. After his father beat him and would have beat him much worse had he stayed there. He hadn't thought what those experiences had done to him. Beneath the smiling and joking and cheerful exterior what had that abuse and fear and hopelessness and despair done to him? He'd never bothered to get him to see so much as a counselor, never bothered to try to see if he needed to work some of these issues out.

And in 10th grade when he was having all those issues with girls, was it just a popular kid, too young to understand how he could hurt people in relationships? Or was it more? Was Craig's inability to commit and to admit love indicative of deeper problems where relationships were concerned? After all, his first relationships, where he was supposed to learn about love and trust had ended disastrously. His mother abandoned him and his father had twisted love up with fear and hate. Deep in his cells he reacted to the threat of love, maybe.

And here they were, Craig shifting in silence on the couch, and when Joey looked at him he looked so sad.

"What's the matter?" Joey said, peering at him. Craig glanced at him and then looked away.

"Nothing," It was a loaded nothing. Joey looked critically at him, intending to press further but starting to feel out of his element. If what was wrong was sort of deeply related to his mental illness or his history of trauma and abuse he didn't know how much help he could actually be. Craig's experiences were outside of his own.

"C'mon, this is the dad you're talking to here. I know something's wrong. What is it?" He always referred to himself as dad with caution, knowing that that's how he felt. In his heart he had two children. But he also knew it wasn't so simple for Craig. That it was easy for Craig to keep him at a distance with the word "step"-father. And that was okay, because he knew that Craig needed the distance. He just wanted Craig to know that he didn't.

Craig shifted again, glanced at him again, his gaze resting on him longer this time. Joey felt such a welling up of pity for him. He didn't hold the violent episode against him. He could take the punches. And he'd seen the sorrow in Craig's eyes, saw the love that he never spoke. What he wanted, more than anything, was for Craig to be okay. It was just that he wasn't quite sure what that meant anymore.

"It's, I don't want to take the meds," Craig looked and sounded so vulnerable. 'Don't let anything be wrong with me,' seemed to be the subtext here. The medication represented it to him, being sick, being broken and damaged.

"You need to take them," Joey said softly, still trying to connect his gaze to Craig's. But Craig was looking down.

"Maybe I don't. I'm okay, Joey,"

"Yeah, because you're taking the medication,"

Shifting his position, the scowl. Poor kid.


	2. Chapter 2

He didn't want to keep reminding him to take the medication but he couldn't seem to help it. And Craig didn't seem to be remembering on his own. He'd say it, striving for the light tone, "hey, buddy, did you remember your meds?" but it always resulted in the scowl, the looking down, sometimes a sigh. And he'd get up, go upstairs to the bathroom, and he could hear his footsteps as they traveled up the stairs, across the small upstairs hall to the bathroom, and he could hear the medicine cabinet being opened, the water running, and he'd imagine the pills sliding down his throat.

He didn't want to keep looking for signs, for signals and clues that things were wrong. Looking for all the things he'd ignored before. And he wasn't even that sure what to look for. How could you distinguish normal teenage behavior from disturbed, mentally ill behavior? They were very similar. And he knew the constant scrutiny upset Craig, he knew because he'd say, "you blame everything on me being crazy," and he had to think about that. Didn't Craig still have a right to his emotions and feelings despite being bipolar? But what did he have a right to? Didn't he have a right to monitor his son's illness, his moods and his medication? Didn't he have a responsibility to do this? But how much was too much? And how could he know?

He was in the dark with this, a blind man feeling along a rough surface, looking for the telltale knots that would spell problems.

Craig complained about the meds, the way they made him feel.

"It's like I'm tired all the time, I can't think right. Everything feels too thick," Craig said, and Joey furrowed his brow, called up the doctors so they could see if it was normal or if it was side effects that were not acceptable. The doctors told him the first year or so was tricky, trying to get the right balance of medications and therapies, that everyone was different.

"And in teenagers," they had said, "it's particularly tricky since they're still growing. The doses have to be adjusted,"

Joey remembered how one medication, he thought it might have been seroquel but he wasn't sure, the dose was too high and Craig was always groggy and out of it.

He'd started to wonder if Albert was bipolar. It would explain a lot. His out of control moods and temper and the violence. Or maybe it was trickier than that, maybe he had some lesser form of it, something that still disturbed his behavior and reactions but not the full blown manic type I bipolar that Craig was diagnosed with. After all, Albert had gotten through medical school and was a surgeon, a highly successful member of society. That's tricky to do being mentally ill. He didn't know. What did Albert really matter to it all anyway? He was dead. Craig was here.

He knew Albert mattered. Sometimes he was like a physical presence around Craig. He knew Albert was present that day that Craig had beat him up. Who was he really hitting? At times he felt like it wasn't him at all but Albert.

But things seemed more or less okay now. Craig took his meds each time he was reminded. Joey didn't see any obvious side-effects. Side effects. That devil of medication, the curse of the cure. Weight gain and weight loss and insomnia and excessive sleepiness, trouble with coordination and concentration. He'd ask about side effects and get the same weary response. Craig didn't like to talk about any part of it.


End file.
